Sabotage is the climax of the game and a lot of care was taken with it. But if you look closely, there are sill some strange goings on to be found.

If you look in the Interface.crf file using a Zip program and hunt around in the miss16/english subdirectory you'll find two maps of Soulforge that weren't used in the game. These maps are of much higher quality than those we normally see.

The third map I made myself to help pinpoint the locations of someof the places referred to in this section and the next. It doesn'texist in the Interface.crf file but was quickly photoshopped fromthe existing map of the underground areas.

One item of general strangeness, which was touched upon in the Gameplay section, was how water/lava will do weird things when you have too many objects in the mission. As you increase the object count, firstly objects will start to turn invisible, then the framerate will go down, then the surface of any fluids will get screwy, then the fluids will disappear from sight entirely.

Screwy and invisible lava

In the above left image, the surface of the lava detached from the pool it was contained in and started slowly spinning around in circles before vanishing. But, be careful - even though the lava may now be invisible, it will still kill you if you jump in it.

Another piece of blanket unusuality can be found with the welder's masks scattered around the mission. Every single mask floats slightly above the ground, not one sits properly.

There are four large "water pumps" (well, that's what Dromed calls them) in this mission, each one has unusual properties. Three of them have bases you can step inside and one of them has an upright section you can walk through.

Walk-through pumps andfloating masks

With the general strangeness out of the way, it's time to take a look at specific incidents where objects and situations are just not quite right.

Outside the Cathedral

If you walk out the front doors you'll come across several large spotlights on the ground that illuminate the cathedral's walls. Look closely and you'll see that these spotlights aren't actually attached to anything and are just sitting there.

Walking further around outside will take you to two very large portculli, one on either side of the cathedral, that you cannot get past. If you look at the walls along here you will see several small windows that open into the area beneath Bays B and C. These windows have no shutters and no glass. How did Karras miss these obvious windows when he was sealing the place up?

Bay A

At the North end of the bay is a large angel with a rotating gear above it. Using the climbing technique of elevatoring reveals that the large gear is not solid and you can put your head inside it.

Bay E

Climb onto the top of the fusing machine and take a look at the two large, pointy electrodes. From the back you can see right through them if you look under the metal ball at their peak.

The Storage Rooms

In every storage room there is at least one floating object, usually many more. Mines, poles, bits and pieces can all be found hovering slightly above the surface they're supposed to be sitting on.

Fusing Machine transparencies and floating mines

The Plans Room

This room is unusual only because it contains the one secret in the mission that doesn't involve creating something with one of the many machines scattered throughout the mission. Inside the secret room is a banner than vanishes if you cut it down.

Corridors to Karras' Chamber

There are three banners in a row at the top of the elevator, the middle one being larger than the other two. Cut the middle banner down and it will go back to being the same size as the others.

Furnace Room

In the room with the four patrolling Mechanist Slaves and the huge flame that periodically shoots from the floor at the centre of the room are several small pits of water. If you jump into the pools or drop something into them you will notice that the water doesn't make any splashing sounds, it is totally silent.

Lava Room

(see position 1 on the maps at the start of this section) There are two Watchful eyes in this room, both are pushed too high into the ceiling.

If you alert the Eastern Eye in this room it will open a metal door and release a CombatBot. If you look closely into the chamber the bot came from you will see another CombatBot in there who doesn't react to your presence.

This CombatBot is a ghost, you can walk right through it and it won't react. You cannot hit it with your sword or blackjack. The only way to destroy it is via splash damage from an explosion. Setting off a few frogbeasts or mines underneath the bot will kill it. Once dead, you can proceed to break it into pieces the same way you would with any other bot.

The Room of Death

(see position 2 on the maps at the start of this section) No misaligned objects here, but this is a very strange room. Everything in it seems to be designed to be deadly. There's a lava pit, a big crusher, spinning blades than come down form the ceiling and a conveyor belt with bursts of flame. With all this, it is very surprising that the Mechanists chose this room for the location of their slippery slide.

Ghostly bots and slippery slides

The Sewers

(see position 3 on the maps at the start of this section) In the waters of the sewers beneath the underground rooms can be found several water arrows. As you get close to them you can see that they are actually floating just out of the water.

The Vault

(see position 4 on the maps at the start of this section) The watchful Eye positioned to look down the corridor before you get to the large vaulted room here is pushed too far into the ceiling.

In the vaulted room is a machine with two jointed metal legs that are actually ghost objects; you can stand inside them while they move around and pass through Garrett's body.

Climbing up the ladder to the elevator which leads to the signal tower and looking down at the ladder from above reveals the it isn't attached to the wall, but floats a short distance from it.

If you unlock the two circular metal doors and venture down into the small room underneath the Vault, you can see that one of the pipes at the East end doesn't quite reach the ceiling.

The unusual underground

The Golden Child

(see position 5 on the maps at the start of this section) This small robot child is an enigma. He cannot be killed or harmed in any way and, despite running away, doesn't actually do anything. He doesn't alert the AIs in the locked room behind him, he doesn't attack. He just runs in circles when he sees you. Sort of like a puppy when its master comes home - but without the mess on the carpet.

Also, if you look at the spikes on the back of the child you can see that they are partially transparent.

The kid's back

In the huge room the Child runs into are two large spotlights on the ground. Close inspection reveals that they aren't attached to the wall, but rather sitting on the ground just like the spotlights outside the cathedral.

The Swimming Pool

(see position 6 on the maps at the start of this section) If you climb up the centre ladder into the pipes outside the door that leads to the Golden Child you will soon come to an opening that leads into a huge room. With the aid of a vine arrow you can climb onto the rafters and make your way across to the other side. Halfway across you can look down and see the secret Mechanist swimming pool.

The Computer Room

(see position 7 on the maps at the start of this section) This room leads to one of the signal towers and requires you to pull two switches to open the gates barring the end of the North room. From certain angles, you can make the gates vanish.

From two grills, to one, to none

There is one final bit of strangeness to cover, but it is different from all the other items discussed so far as it can only be access by cheating *GASP*

That's right, I used the forbidden word.

Karras' chamber has yet to be breached in normal gameplay (but not through lack of trying), so to enter it requires the player to open up Dromed, the editor for the game. If you delete the unbreakable window in front to the chamber you will be able to enter the chamber.

To do this, first make a backup of the "miss16.mis" file in your Thief folder and then open the mission in Dromed. Typefind_obj 2139in the small window in the right hand corner and hit enter. This will highlight the unbreakable window and pressing the delete button on your keyboard will remove it from the mission. Then save the mission and exit Dromed.

Load the mission in the game and restart it, the unbreakable window should now be gone and you will be able to enter the chamber.

The chamber is a very unusual place. As the designers never expected the player to enter it, they took quite a few liberties.

Karras' crazy chamber

Indicated by the arrows in the picture above are six small gauges on the wall of the chamber. These gauges rotate back and forth endlessly.

The small levers on the wall that are in the down position don't move the first time you frob them. It takes two goes to make them move and then they won't move again.

The levers in the two silver devices (beside the desk and at far right of above picture) don't move at all and you will only make a noise (as though they did move) the first time you use them.

Then there is Karras himself. No matter what you do, he won't notice you. You can detonate three Sunburst devices (Thief's doomsday weapon) under his feet and he won't even blink. Sword, blackjack, frogbeast eggs, gas arrows - all weapons are useless against him.